Security in the clouds: a bird's eye view

Over the last years, something called “cloud computing” has become a major theme in computer science and information security. Essentially, it concerns delivering information technology as a service, by enabling the renting of software, computing power and storage. In this contribution, we give a high-level overview of the issues that the emergence of cloud computing as a paradigm raises, both from a computer science and a philosophical perspective. We discuss 1) the ideal and limitations of encrypted data processing, 2) the necessity of simulating physical constraints in virtualised infrastructures, 3) the personal equivalent of cloud computing in the form of outsourced identity, and 4) the possibilities for connecting policy and technical level issues by means of a new ethical approach, called informational precaution.